Type-2 diabetes

Numerous SNPs have each been associated with (slightly) increased risk for type-2 diabetes, but they only marginallly improve the odds of predicting whether an individual will get type-2 diabetes based on the traditional clinical characteristics combining age, sex and weight ([PMID 18694974]; see also [1]). Such SNPs include:

10 SNPs in all 10 regions found so far in multiple studies and meta-analyses, as known at the time of publication [PMID 17463248]:

Note that this paper reports that if you have the highest risk genotype for all 10 of these SNPs, you are estimated to be at double the risk for type-2 diabetes compared to the average person, whereas if you have the lowest risk genotype for every one of these 10 SNPs, you are estimated to be at half the risk.

[PMID 17043802] Carrying two copies of a common variant of TCF7L2 doubles your chances of developing diabetes and puts you in a similar risk category to being clinically obese. A common variant of the gene increased the risk of developing diabetes by 50 per cent. Carrying two copies of the variant gene increased the risk another two fold. About 1 in 5 type-2 diabetics (18%) carry two copies of this variant compared to about 1 in 10 (8-11%) of the general population. In the population as a whole, the impact of this gene on the risk of developing diabetes is as big as the problem of being clinically obese (having a body mass index over 30). news summary. The SNP is either rs7903146 (IVS3C > T) or rs12255372